


Batter My Heart

by Aria



Category: The Exorcist (TV)
Genre: Begging, Demons, Exorcisms, First Time, M/M, Post-Season/Series 02, Priests Attempting Dirty Talk, Too Many Feelings About God, Yuletide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-13
Updated: 2018-12-13
Packaged: 2019-09-17 19:13:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,899
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16980210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aria/pseuds/Aria
Summary: He missed Tomas the way he missed God, Marcus realizes, and it evaporates the air in his lungs, the desperatenecessityof it.





	Batter My Heart

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Savageseraph](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Savageseraph/gifts).



> Title from the poem _Batter my heart, three-person'd God_ by John Donne; the subtitle of this fic is basically "like John Donne, we want to fuck God" and I stand by it.
> 
> Beta thanks to: oliviacirce, as always, for making my prose sharper and for being enthusiastic even without having seen the canon; Team Horror, who watched this show with me and provided great feedback: TheWrongKindOfPC for making Tomas better; filiabelialis for, as always, telling me to Make It Worse; feedingonwind, for making sure I added more Mouse and more God.

Standing under a lowering sky on a damp pier, Marcus Keane feels God again, and his breath stops in his chest with something greater than awe, colder than fear, vaster than he can compass. The difference between God and demons is not terror. Demons creep in around all the dark edges, but God is the revealing light, and both have seen inside Marcus's head; the difference is that God will not destroy him, even seeing all his terrible weaknesses. Marcus feels scoured with joy and revelation. When he can breathe again, the word echoing in his head and rising with his breath is the only important one left.

_Tomas._

+

It takes Marcus two months to find Tomas, two months between God speaking to him and the morning Marcus pulls up to a motel on the muggy outskirts of Saint Paul, a neon _NO VACANCY_ sign flickering sullenly in the early morning light. The mile counter on the dash reads the distance between the motel and Seattle, _1666_ , before Marcus shuts off the engine and the digital numbers fade to grey. Two months on the road, Marcus groping his way back towards purpose. The world has cracked open again, flooded with light, the inexpressible _relief_ of knowing that he is an instrument of God's purpose. In those two months, three exorcisms: a terrified fifteen-year-old boy in Spokane, a refreshingly stubborn old man in Missoula, and a soft-spoken middle-aged widow in Alexandria, the last of whom Marcus had left just last night before a hard sleep in his truck followed by terrible coffee from a twenty-four-hour McDonald's. 

Two months, with the compass in his heart pointing him unfailingly towards this precise moment, and in all that time, Marcus hasn't figured out what he's going to say. It depends on the circumstances. He's meant to find Tomas again, _must_ find him again, but God did not say why.

Marcus runs a tired hand over his face, and leaves the car to crunch across the motel parking lot. The window curtains in the downstairs rooms are still drawn. The long nights, sitting with Etta in Alexandria while she writhed and screamed invectives at him, are telling themselves now in the way time has a surreal stretch to it, in the way the coffee is still buzzing in Marcus's limbs and setting up the threat of a headache behind his eyes. He can still remember the urgent horror he felt, knowing that the most important thing in the world was to find Tomas again. If God has reached down and touched his mind for that, Marcus should be at his best.

When has he ever been at his best around Tomas.

Marcus raps on the door of room 163. No sound within, and he knocks again, more loudly. This time there is an answering rustle, and a pause, during which Marcus positions himself in front of the door's peephole. Finally, slowly, the door opens. Standing in the doorway is Mouse, presumably carrying a weapon out of Marcus's line of sight. Marcus spreads his hands.

"Just me, Mouse," he says.

"Prove it," she returns. There is nothing warm in her eyes.

"I'm glad you're asking," Marcus says. "It's good you stayed with him."

"That doesn't prove anything," Mouse returns, not giving an inch, and God, Marcus adores her. She was wonderful when she was a brave sister tangling herself up in things he shouldn't have allowed her to try to understand, and she's wonderful now, grown steely and unyielding despite what Marcus would have wished for her. It feels strangely uncomplicated to admire her, when he could feel guilt, or regret, or any one of the useless emotions he's been overburdened with forever.

Marcus lifts the crucifix from inside his shirt and presses it to his lips, his eyes not leaving hers. After a moment Mouse's shoulders untense fractionally. 

"You shouldn't have been able to find us," she says, letting Marcus in. Inside, the light is dim. There are two twin beds, neither made, and a closed door leading to the adjoining bathroom. Marcus can hear water running. Mouse sits on one of the unmade beds. "How did you manage it?"

"With God's guiding hand," Marcus replies absently, gazing at the line of light under the bathroom door. "How is he?"

"I assume you mean Father Tomas," Mouse says, very dry, "not God," and Marcus is startled into a bark of laughter. When he looks at Mouse, the corners of her mouth are tilted into a smile for a moment before her expression fades to seriousness. "I stop him from going inside when I can," she says. "But what he does is effective, and he hasn't tried anything as stupid as offering himself as a vessel again."

"It's effective," Marcus repeats. The threat of a headache is building into a throbbing that starts behind his eyes and creeps out to his temples. He pinches the bridge of his nose. He asks, for form's sake, "Is he careful?" If Tomas were careful, God would not have poured this urgency into Marcus. 

"No," Mouse says. "So far, he's lucky."

An abrupt silence falls, made more complete by the shower shutting off in the next room.

Mouse stands. "I meant to get us coffee. Want some?"

It would be safer, given the Vatican, for all of them to stay together. When Tomas emerges, they can all pile into one car or another, drive to the nearest greasy spoon, and eat breakfast in a cocoon of tense silence, made half of things too dangerous to be overheard and half of things too difficult to say. Marcus's headache begins to throb in earnest. "Coffee," he says. " God yes, I slept like absolute hell."

Mouse's mouth gives a sympathetic twitch. "I'll be back soon."

"Thanks," Marcus says. She waves it off and goes out the door.

Marcus sits down on the edge of a bed and waits in the quiet, staring at the line of light under the bathroom door. He still doesn't know what to say. _I didn't leave so you could be fucking reckless_ is the opener that comes to mind, and Marcus is well aware that getting Tomas on the defensive won't do either of them any good. _I missed you_ is even worse, a truth of such vulnerability that Marcus knows Tomas would mistrust it. God, Marcus doesn't even know where to put his own emotions, wavering somewhere between anticipation and anger.

The door opens, and Tomas emerges. His hair is damp, curling at the nape of his neck. He is mostly dressed, black trousers, black shirt, but his feet are bare, and he hasn't yet added his clerical collar: the top few buttons of his shirt are undone, exposing the vulnerable hollow of his neck. Marcus makes himself meet Tomas's eyes.

Tomas's expression is naked, but not as one might be stripped of clothes, revealed; instead, naked like winter ice after a cold wind blows away the snow, exposing a dangerous uncertain depth. "Marcus," he says, barely more than a breath. Surprise, certainly, but Marcus cannot tell what else.

"Hi," Marcus says, a crooked rueful smile starting on his face.

A beat longer, the silence stretching, and then Tomas gives a laugh, a half-disbelieving sound, and drops to his knees so that his face is tilted up to Marcus's when he leans forward to envelope Marcus in an embrace. Marcus finds himself returning it, his fingers curling into the fabric of Tomas's shirt, Tomas's torso solid and warm against his. Tomas smells of cheap shampoo and clean cloth and familiarity, and Marcus breathes in too deeply, trying and failing to uncoil his own tension.

Slowly, reluctantly, Marcus pulls away.

Tomas is at arm's length now, but he stays on his knees, his hands on Marcus's shoulders. His eyes search Marcus's face. "You came back."

"Yeah." Marcus takes one of Tomas's hands by the wrist, only half-voluntary, a motion that starts as an attempt to gently pry Tomas away from him and ends with him merely holding on, rubbing his thumb along the delicate inner skin of Tomas's wrist. 

He missed Tomas the way he missed God, he realizes, and it evaporates the air in his lungs, the desperate _necessity_ of it. 

It's a blasphemy, and that God would send him back to Tomas when both of them need one another this much feels like a trap: when has Marcus ever been offered something he wants, without condition? Not a trap, then, but a test, so Marcus squeezes Tomas's wrist decisively and leans back. Tomas takes the hint and rises to his feet to finish dressing. Socks, shirt buttoned, clerical collar fastened. "What changed your mind?" he asks.

"God." Marcus gives Tomas a rueful smile. "As it turns out, my failings are only of consequence to me. Doesn't matter if I think I've made myself impure. He -- spoke to me again. I heard His voice."

Tomas turns to look at Marcus, and here is the first expression that Marcus can read without ambiguity: longing. "What did He say?" Tomas asks.

"That I had to find you again," Marcus says, watching Tomas closely.

"Did He say why?" Tomas's voice has slid past longing now, edging towards desperation. He sounds ... untethered, that's the word. Unmoored from his own convictions. It's familiar to Marcus, who has heard and flinched from his own voice at moments close to drowning. The formless urgency that God poured into his heart is beginning to take a shape, one Marcus understands with ugly intimacy. 

"No," Marcus says, carefully. "But--"

The outer door clicks unlocked. Both of them turn, Marcus on his feet in a moment, but it's only Mouse, edging in with a cardboard tray of coffee balanced in one hand. Marcus starts towards her first, and takes the tray from her hands so that she can settle into the room's lumpy armchair. 

"I see you two have said hello again," she says, taking one of the coffees back. She sips it, grimaces, drinks again. "So, what now?"

"I think that's your business," Marcus replies. He sits on the side of the bed facing the armchair, and after a moment, Tomas sits down next to him, space between them. Marcus tries the coffee. It's fucking terrible, and already only lukewarm -- so, fairly bog-standard exorcist coffee. "I'm just along for the ride." 

"The three of us will be traveling together?" Tomas asks.

"Yeah, that's the idea." Marcus looks between the two of them. Mouse gives him a brief crooked smile: she has come through her own crucible, and what she is on the other side understands Marcus more than Marcus would ever have wanted. She knows that it's better for both of them to be here for Tomas than either of them to be here alone. When Marcus looks to Tomas, Tomas nods, but not as though he is convinced. Fair enough. 

"There is a woman in Minneapolis," Tomas says. "Her sister reached out to Mouse. We haven't confirmed there is a demon; that is our next step."

"Not a trap?" Marcus asks.

"Not a trap," Mouse replies. "I know her. She hasn't asked for help from the local diocese, so we shouldn't have any heat there." She hesitates. "I'll be your liaison, since she knows me, but for the actual exorcism--"

Marcus's entire experience with Mouse's exorcism style is Andy Kim, but her tone paints a vivid picture: that one was not a fluke of desperation. She is hard now, his Mouse, a weapon of absolute precision, and she has helped Tomas because someone has to. Perhaps they even balance each other well, Tomas's infinite compassion to Mouse's steely necessity, but now that Marcus is back -- well. How many victims has she lost? Marcus has only ever lost two.

"I'd be honored," Marcus says softly. He looks to Tomas again. "If you'll have me."

Tomas nods, slowly, and smiles. "Of course," he says. 

The smile doesn't reach his eyes, but it's something.

+

Chloe Hughes is twenty-six, lives with her sister Jenna in a newish single-storey house in a quiet Minneapolis neighborhood, and until three weeks ago worked for a small law firm downtown before her increasingly erratic behavior caused Jenna to insist she take sick leave. Now she's strapped to the mattress in her newly-padded bedroom, shrieking at Marcus and Tomas in a host of languages while down the hall Mouse does her best to keep Jenna calm.

Marcus is already realizing how damned tricky this is going to be.

He is out of practice at doing this with a partner. Their rhythm had already been faltering before Marcus left, Tomas chafing against the strictures of his position as apprentice, Marcus by turns impatient and afraid for him. In their months apart, Tomas has grown as an exorcist: he no longer says the ritual words as though he is reading dead pressed letters and hoping to transform them by sound into miracles; now he speaks as though he knows they are merely the framework, the chosen structure through which he pours God's will. At least there is that. At least Tomas still believes himself God's vessel. But Marcus remembers Tomas's unmoored longing, back at the motel, and he is afraid for Tomas, more than he ever has been.

"We drive you from us, unclean spirits!" Tomas meets Marcus's eyes. Chloe's shrieking has subsided to panting. Tomas looks tired, but he doesn't look run-down, nor like he's thinking of doing anything drastic. 

Marcus gives him a quick nod and kneels next to Chloe. Her head lolls to face him. Her hair is starting to mat with sweat, but her lips aren't too chapped yet, her skin not mottled with poison. The worst is still before them. Marcus takes a flannel -- unconsecrated water -- and wipes her brow. "You are forgiven," Marcus murmurs.

A smile stretches Chloe's mouth. "You aren't," she says, the harmonic rasp of a demon half-bothering to playact a mortal. "You only have one use. You're going to be used and used until you're all used up, and then you're ours."

Marcus wrings the cloth, ignoring her.

Chloe's body jerks off the bed, towards him. "Filthy and sick and sinful," the demon hisses. "You couldn't even pretend to be sorry. You'd kill a hundred times for him. A _thousand_." The grin stretches wider, a leer. "You'd worship his body. You'd replace your God with him."

Marcus smudges ash on his thumb and draws a crucifix on Chloe's forehead. She collapses, screaming. Marcus is playing dirty, but sometimes that is the only way to shut them up, before they worm too far inside, and Marcus has a dozen tricks to prevent that. Words cannot mean too much, given all the years he's had to fortify himself against them. By the fifth time, Marcus no longer flinched when demons called him queer. By the fifth year, he no longer reeled back blindsided from his father's voice coming from a possessed mouth. But all a demon does is reach into the cracks of a psyche and split it along the seams, and this one--

It's twisting what Marcus feels, as they always do. Marcus has too much else to worry about to try fighting off its words with a proper refutation in his heart.

Tomas has indeed become a better exorcist, because he doesn't ask how Marcus is doing, or force Marcus to respond to what the demon has said. Instead he steps forward and begins, "God the Father commands you," and Marcus, standing again, joins in.

+

Mouse stays with Jenna. Tomas and Marcus leave the Hughes residence at dusk, stopping for a quick meal of greasy fast food, and return to the motel. Marcus almost thinks they'll fall asleep without saying a word to one another, but as he's shrugging off his leather jacket, preparing to collapse into the nearest bed, Tomas says, "You don't ever have to, you know."

Marcus breathes out slowly, back in. "Have to what?"

"Kill for me," Tomas replies at once, with the absolute guileless openness that always makes Marcus's throat ache a little, equal measures of envy and fear. "I know you will do what you have to do, but that -- is never something you have to do, for me."

"So we're both martyrs in our own way," Marcus says, doing his best to keep his voice easy. "Don't give yourself up as an offering, and I won't have to."

Tomas licks his lip, and Marcus, like a fucking helpless fool, follows the movement. But Tomas doesn't say anything about the demon's other words. He only nods, carefully. "I have not had to," he says, which is obvious enough. "Mouse has been a good partner." He winces. "You were -- were a good partner too. Are." Winces again. "Which I do not mean as any kind of ultimatum to stay--"

"Tomas," Marcus interrupts. He feels almost on the verge of laughter. "I know you're not gonna throw a tantrum and give yourself to the nearest demon if I leave. And I'm not planning to." He holds Tomas's gaze. His eyes are dark and a little wary, and Marcus hopes desperately that Tomas will become transparent to him again soon. "I'm staying," Marcus says.

But Tomas looks away. "We both go where God wills us to go," he says. "Goodnight, Marcus."

Marcus knows he should push. They're both powder kegs, and the demon is millions of potential sparks. But the last time Marcus pushed, he pushed Tomas halfway to integration and himself halfway across the country. He has to trust that Tomas is on his way to being a seasoned exorcist now, without Marcus needing to hover, and he has to trust that God sent him here because he has it in himself to be unflinchingly steady while Tomas gropes his way back towards his own bedrock of belief. Push Tomas, and all of it could collapse.

He'll push the demon instead, right out of Chloe Hughes. The rest can come later.

+

The demon ignores Tomas completely.

For the first few days, Marcus is pleased with that. Chloe's lips crack and her eyes go bruised and her voice shreds itself while the thing inside her tells Marcus about his limited use, his terrible weaknesses, his filthy shameful desires, the blasphemy in his heart. It barely acknowledges Tomas is in the room, refusing to look at him while he recites prayers, screaming and thrashing under Tomas's sprinklings of holy water with its gaze locked in fixed hatred on Marcus's face. At first Marcus thinks it's because the demon sees him, the more seasoned exorcist, as the real threat, and is glad to be the focal point of its viciousness. But.

But it takes him four days, four days too long, to see what its refusal to acknowledge Tomas is doing. Tomas, who thought he had been chosen by God; Tomas, who slowly came to fear his visions as much as Marcus did; Tomas, whom Marcus abandoned, and to whom he then returned having heard God's voice again. Uncertainty atop terrible uncertainty atop possible rejection, slowly splintering what faith and conviction Tomas still has, and Chloe's demon ignores him as though he is utterly powerless.

"You should go back in alone," Tomas says on the fourth day, while they are resting in the hallway. There is absolute defeat in his voice, and that's when Marcus realizes what the demon is doing.

"Take a break," Marcus says gently. Tomas's nod is subdued, and Marcus reaches out to squeeze his shoulder. "You know it's always like this," he adds. "It's working, Tomas."

Tomas runs a hand over his face. "Yeah," he says, muffled.

 _Push_ , Marcus thinks. He doesn't. He squeezes Tomas's shoulder again and goes back into the room.

"Hold tighter, Marcus," the demon rasps, lifting Chloe's head to watch his approach. "Hold tight enough and he won't slip away."

Marcus crosses himself, and begins. The words are immaterial, the structure, the vessel, and he holds the demon's gaze while he speaks, pouring his belief into it. God is with him, and the pathetic thing curled inside Chloe Hughes knows it, or it would not be trying so hard to drive a wedge between him and Tomas, or to find the weak places inside him. 

"He won't ever love you," the demon says.

That nearly trips Marcus up. It's a vicious hit, if only because Marcus is, by design, a half-broken _mess_ with dozens of signposted psychological targets to aim for, and that one is so -- so simple. Demons love to be clever. Going so baldly for the heart means that this one is growing desperate. Marcus takes a steadying breath and keeps reading.

Some time later, Tomas slips into the room to spell him. Marcus is relieved, partly because his voice is growing hoarse, partly because it means Tomas has not lost all faith in himself. He gives Tomas a nod and goes to sit down in Chloe's desk chair, belatedly realizing that it might have been a show of his own faith if he'd left the room entirely. Too late now.

Deprived of Marcus, the demon watches Tomas with an air of scorn. It screams when sprinkled with holy water, but otherwise ignores Tomas, until it grows bored. They always grow bored. Then it uses Chloe's mouth, and its own grating rasp of a voice, to say, "Let the real one have a turn again."

Tomas falters for a bare moment, then keeps speaking.

The demon laughs, Chloe's spine arching off the bed. "Pretender!" it shrieks. "What do you _want_ , Father Tomas? Do you want to be him?" It throws Marcus a contemptuous look. Marcus gazes back impassively. "You're the only one who does," the demon croons. "Or is it worse than that? You love to be told you _can't_. You'd throw yourself at anything you've been forbidden. Don't engage in adultery. Don't follow your visions. Don't profane your _vows_!"

Abruptly Tomas snaps his Bible shut. Marcus starts to his feet, alarmed that the demon got to him so easily. "Marcus," Tomas says, reaching for him, and Marcus gives him an arm just as Tomas's eyes roll up in his head, only the whites showing. 

"Tomas," Marcus says, and is unsurprised to receive no response. The demon leers from the bed. But Tomas is not shaking, the surest sign of being pulled into a victim's mind. This is -- probably -- a vision. Marcus gently takes him by the elbow, leading him from the room. At least Tomas can still walk, and comes willingly, as though sleepwalking.

Marcus sits Tomas down on a couch in the living room. He goes, first, back to Chloe's bedroom, where the demon has by now thrashed Chloe's body to exhaustion. Marcus gives her water, and cleans her as best he can. He leaves her there, and goes down the hall to peer into the kitchen. Mouse is cooking Jenna dinner while Jenna reads a book. Neither of them look up, the sizzle of Mouse frying mushrooms covering the sound of Marcus's footsteps. For a moment Marcus watches Jenna, who looks tired but steady, and he takes comfort in the fact that she is not yet bowed under fear or doubt. He retreats to where Tomas is sitting, his eyes still blank, his hands limp in his lap. Marcus sits beside him. He breathes in the smells of good cooking, and doesn't think much of anything at all, allowing his mind to rest. 

At length Tomas stirs, jolting back into himself with his eyes wild. Marcus catches his arm, steadying. "I'm here."

Tomas focuses on him. "I saw--" he gasps, and hesitates. He is afraid of it now, Marcus sees. Tomas swallows. "I saw the way to lead her out," he says, "but if I follow her in, to lead her--" If it's a trap, he means. If it's a curse. If this is not how God has chosen to speak with him. 

A test, Marcus thought, when Tomas embraced him in the motel. He remembers the urgent horror, the edge of conviction that Tomas had already trusted some vision and fallen to a demon. He remembers recognizing the twist of desperation in Tomas's voice, asking what God had said to Marcus, the longing for proof, the uncertainty. And the demon -- the demon wants Tomas uncertain, too. Marcus has shown that he will defend Tomas against any attempt to trick him into switching places with the possessed, so this one is trying a different tack: to wrench Tomas so far from faith that he is defenseless.

Marcus takes a breath, and says, "Who cares if your visions are God's gift or a curse?" Tomas stares at him. "God sent me to you," Marcus says, holding his gaze and pouring conviction into it, "and your visions sent you to me. That is a good thing. You were always right about that. I hated that you had guidance, and that -- that no one was speaking to me. I had to get my head out of my own arse, and none of it had to do with you in the end. God is with me; I don't doubt that. I wouldn't wish those visions on myself, not then, not ever, but you have them, and everything this demon has been doing is to convince you that you're powerless. So use it. Trust it."

"And if you're wrong?" Tomas asks. His voice breaks in the middle, but he doesn't look away.

"Don't give yourself to it," Marcus says. "I'll drag you back out if I have to."

There is a moment when he thinks Tomas is going to refuse -- that he's going to throw himself in so fully that Marcus can never reach him, or pull away so completely that Marcus will never see him again. Instead Tomas squares his shoulders. "I know you will," he says. "I'll do it."

+

Every exorcism is terrible, in its own way. This one is terrible because all Marcus can do is sit there, watching Tomas's blank face, and have faith that this is not a mistake, and that if the time comes to drag Tomas back out, he'll know when it is. When they begin, Tomas's hand in Chloe's as his soul travels with hers, the demon in Chloe's body laughs and laughs. It's an awful grating sound, but Marcus sits through it without comment, and the demon doesn't try to speak. It just laughs until, eventually, it doesn't.

There is a moment when Chloe's face flickers to lucidity, and she manages a weak encouraging smile in Marcus's direction before her eyes flutter shut again.

Sometime after that, Mouse cracks the door. "We've got--" she starts, before taking in the scene. "Oh."

"Yes?" Marcus asks, turning to her.

"He convinced _you_ to let him go in like that," Mouse says flatly. "You."

"The demon did, actually," Marcus says. "Showed too much of its hand. It tried to downplay what Tomas can do. Tried to make him feel worthless to himself."

"Your choice." Mouse is frowning. "What are you going to do if you're wrong?"

"I'm not," Marcus says.

Mouse's frown deepens, but when she speaks again, it isn't to argue. "I came to say dinner was ready. Was going to invite both of you out to join us, but maybe you'll want it in here."

"I'll have something later," Marcus says. "When Tomas does." Mouse nods, beginning to duck back out, and Marcus adds, "Mouse. Thank you. For staying with Jenna, and for--" He gestures to Tomas.

"Of course," Mouse says. "I care for him too, you know."

Marcus is left alone, with Tomas's unconscious body, and Chloe's, and a quiescent demon. He watches them for signs of trouble. His body aches with tension. God is with him, but it's still Marcus's damn fool self that will have to do the clumsy earthly work of wrenching Tomas free, if he can't be stronger than the demon. _Our Father, who art in Heaven_ , Marcus thinks, less for the prayer itself than for the comfort of the repetition, his mind running over the rosary beads of the worn-smooth words to distract himself from the creeping horror of an interminable wait. Chloe's breathing is deep and even, with a rattle at the end of each breath that Marcus will worry about if Tomas doesn't get the demon out soon. Her eyes are sunken and her skin looks terrible but, save for a faint line between her eyebrows, her expression is calm for the first time in days. 

Tomas is breathing evenly too, as though asleep. His hand is tight in Chloe's. His eyelashes cast soft shadows on his cheeks. Marcus gazes at his face: familiar, beautiful. Tomas isn't his type, really, in that when they met, he was overeager and naïve and so, so young. Tomas isn't his type, except for his stubbornness, and fierce resilience, and absolute resolve, and the fact that Marcus will kill to keep him safe. The demon wasn't wrong about Marcus, where Tomas is concerned.

He's still watching Tomas's face when Tomas's eyes open. Marcus is caught out, his face open and tender, and he sees Tomas register it, sees his lips part in surprise.

On the bed Chloe takes a huge breath, as though surfacing from too long under water, and both of them turn to her. She's crying, color coming back into her face, still clinging to Tomas's hand even as Tomas murmurs reassurances and tries to unbind her wrists. Marcus helps untie her. He leaves Tomas to hold her while he goes out into the hall to tell Jenna and Mouse that Chloe is back. He watches as Jenna flings herself on her sister, crying too, Tomas caught up in their embrace, while Marcus stands in the doorway with Mouse.

"I guess God knew what He was doing, sending you," Mouse says in an undertone.

"Seems so," Marcus agrees. From across the room Tomas looks up, his eyes meeting Marcus's, and there is joy in his face: wonder, and certainty, and the bedrock of faith. _Thank you,_ Marcus thinks. _My God, thank you._

+

Tomas and Marcus sit down to eat the dinner Mouse prepared. Though Mouse has already eaten, she joins them, to give Jenna and Chloe some privacy for their reunion. Marcus shovels in food with elated exhaustion. Tomas, with more decorum, also consumes his dinner with steady focus. Mouse sits in silence until they start on their second helpings, then says, "What happened in there?"

"A success," Marcus says. Mouse scowls at him. In her position, he'd probably do the same.

"I saw ... her father," says Tomas. "Chloe's father. He left when she was young, and the demon posed as his return. It had her inside her childhood home. She wanted him back, but when I found her, she knew it was not him. I had to lead her out of the house, back to the family she still has."

"That's all?" Mouse asks. "What about the demon?"

"I did not lose myself," Tomas replies, with a calm, measured look across the table. "I knew what it was, and I knew the way." It's more than that; it's always more than that. But Tomas's tone brooks no further questions, and Marcus has been an exorcist more than long enough to know better than to press on tender places when they're still raw. Even Tomas is collecting scars now, but this exorcism doesn't need to be one of them.

"Good," Mouse says. She doesn't press either. Instead, she looks between them for a moment, visibly debating something. "I wouldn't have let you do it. God knows I can't stop you, but she wasn't so far gone that you had to resort to it."

"Maybe it should not be a last resort," Tomas suggests. "If I am given a vision, I want to follow it _before_ we become desperate."

"Let's do it case by case," Mouse says. "But I see your point."

Marcus watches this exchange with a smile rising unbidden to his face. Neither of them is defensive with the other, or doing the sort of posturing that comes with vying for authority. Leaving them alone together wasn't, of all miracles, a mistake, which Marcus has been telling himself since he left, but didn't until this moment truly believe. 

"Case by case sounds good to me too," he says, slanting the smile at Mouse with an insolent tilt to his head.

"Don't think I've forgotten you condoned this," Mouse tells him, less sharply than he deserves. "I still want to know what you were planning to do if you'd made a mistake. It's going to be all three of us in the room next time, so neither of you can do something stupid."

"Next time," Marcus agrees, ducking his head back to his food.

Jenna comes in soon after, saying that Chloe has been asking for Tomas. Tomas rises and then hesitates, glancing over at Marcus. "We both--"

"You go ahead," Marcus tells him. "You're the one who got her back. Don't want to overwhelm her, crowding up her room all at once."

"You should come in a minute, then," Tomas says. "I'm sure she will want to see you too."

Marcus nods and waves him off.

When Tomas and Jenna have gone, Mouse turns to Marcus. "You're being stupid about him," she says.

"Am I," Marcus returns mildly.

"You are," Mouse says. Marcus is still eating, but he can feel Mouse's gaze on him. He sighs, setting his fork aside, and looks up at her. Her face is unreadable again, unyielding. "You were stupid about me," she says, "and you're stupid about him, and I don't know if it's the same kind of stupid, but _watch_ yourself, Marcus."

It's not the same kind of stupid. Marcus doesn't make the same mistake twice; he is much too good at making new ones. "Is this you looking out for him, little church Mouse?"

"Maybe," she says. "Someone should." She sighs, leaning back in her chair. "I suppose everything worked out this time. Should I trust God on this?"

"You're very skeptical for a nun," Marcus tells her.

"Ex-nun," Mouse says. They smile at each other, wry and bitter and fond. For just a moment, Marcus breathes a little easier.

+

Jenna insists that Mouse stay one more night, a gesture that is half gratefulness and half the vestiges of fear. Tomas and Marcus stay long enough to make sure that Chloe is comfortable, and as unrattled from her ordeal as she can be under the circumstances, before they return to the motel.

Tomas takes the first shower, while Marcus does his best to tidy the neglected disarray that the room has fallen into over the week. When Tomas emerges, Marcus ducks into the bathroom amid clouds of steam. He stands in the shower long enough for his shoulders and jaw to fractionally ease, and for something that feels more like clean exhaustion than the habitual watchful weariness to come over him. He lets his fingers prune before he reluctantly steps out, to towel off and shave and brush his teeth and take care of all the small grooming habits that have fallen by the wayside during the exorcism. He puts on a singlet top and sweatpants, more for form's sake than modesty's, fully expecting Tomas to already be asleep.

But no: the bedside lamps are still on when Marcus comes back into the main room. Tomas is sitting cross-legged on a bed, paging through one of those cheap paperbacks ubiquitous to roadside gas stations. Marcus has seen him in boxers and a soft t-shirt a hundred times, during that last year on the road, but he's struck anew by how human Tomas looks without his clerical clothes.

Tomas looks up from the book, and Marcus realizes, with a jolt that is not entirely terror, that they're going to talk about it.

"Thank you," Tomas says quietly. "For believing in me. Or -- for believing that God was with me." He sets the book on the bedside table. "I would not have ... I had begun to doubt."

"Yeah, I noticed," Marcus says. "Couldn't have that."

Tomas smiles, a soft smile that crinkles into laugh lines at the corners of his eyes. Marcus can't fucking breathe. He recognizes this, the cautious feeling-out of a shared space of potential fondness, testing for reciprocation. But Tomas has never spoken in careful code, tentative flirtation, hovering on the cusp of an easy denial. Tomas is going to say something kind that nevertheless firmly delineates what they are: colleagues, friends, brothers-in-arms, none of which is nothing, all of which Marcus will accept.

"I don't want to do this without you," Tomas says.

That's not--

"You don't have to," Marcus says, but Tomas's face is so open, so deliberately vulnerable, and Marcus can't stand to shut himself away and do all that work for both of them, shoulder the burden of denial until anything more than what they have now becomes impossible. "I ... don't want to do this without you, either," Marcus amends.

He sees that Tomas is searching for sarcasm, or deflection, or -- God, what kind of mentor has Marcus turned out to be, that he says one thing that borders on kind and Tomas is waiting for the moment Marcus takes it back or qualifies it with criticism? Tomas deserves better. Marcus can't possibly be what Tomas deserves.

"Good," Tomas says, so damned gently. "If I am going to trust in the visions, I want you there to catch me, if I begin to go astray." A sad smile tilts the edge of his mouth. "I do trust Mouse. I know she will make the right decision, whatever I do. But I don't trust her to save me."

"God, Tomas," Marcus manages around the lump in his throat, "don't tell me you trust _me_ to do that."

"Of course I do," Tomas says, without hesitation. Marcus's heart cracks with love and horror. How easy it was, to repair the distance and wariness Tomas gave him at the beginning of the week. How easy it is, to offer Tomas even the barest hint of warmth, and watch Tomas give over his trust. Marcus is not worthy of that. He gropes for something to say, but all his words have evaporated, that terrifying declaration glowing in the air between them. 

Tomas's eyes are soft with understanding. He shifts fractionally, making room, an invitation, and Marcus is a fool. He knows better, but he comes and sits next to Tomas on the bed, their knees not quite touching.

"You know you shouldn't," Marcus says. He means _shouldn't trust me_ , but Tomas's breath hitches as though Marcus has said something devastating, and Marcus remembers: _You'd throw yourself at anything you've been forbidden_. The demon wasn't wrong about Marcus, where Tomas is concerned. Oh. 

_Oh_. Tomas is looking at Marcus, caught out, as incapable as ever at dissembling his own feelings. "Oh, Tomas," Marcus sighs.

Tomas looks away, down at his hands, curled into loose fists against his bare thighs. He's close enough for Marcus to see the texture of his stubble, close enough to kiss. He is always going to be exactly this close and no closer, the precise distance of yearning toward something untouchable. That is what Marcus has made himself, untouchable, in admonishments and layers of closed-over wounds and a certainty that is half the time in opposition to Tomas's. If Marcus leaves this be, they will never touch again, not truly; they will be tied together and held at arm's length by a terrible longing, never breached or consummated, and both of them are the sort of men who could endure that, accept it as their due.

Fuck that, Marcus thinks. 

He reaches out and runs his thumb along the scrape of Tomas's jaw. Tomas looks back up, startled, and Marcus draws him into a kiss. 

If he were being careful, the kiss would be a question, an offering, a press of lips in an invitation that Tomas could choose to accept or pull away from. Marcus is not careful. He rubs his nose along Tomas's, licks at the seam of his lips, and when they part on a surprised indrawn breath, Marcus fists his free hand in the thick hair at the nape of Tomas's neck and pulls him crushingly close. Tomas tastes _magnificent_ , Marcus thinks nonsensically. Tomas kisses as though he's used to being the one leading, tries to take control of the rhythm of it until Marcus nips his lower lip and sucks on his tongue and Tomas gives a full-body shudder, yielding. He ends up sprawled back on the pillows, Marcus braced over him.

"What are we doing?" he mumbles against Marcus's mouth, and Marcus understands in a flash that this isn't a protest; this, absurdly, is Tomas revving his own engine, pretending at resistance. 

Marcus feels a welling of amused tenderness. He ducks his head to grin into the collar of Tomas's t-shirt, and mouths at the line of his neck. Tomas shivers satisfyingly. "You have had sex before, Tomas," he murmurs. "Figure it out."

This draws a laugh from Tomas. One hand comes up tentatively to rest on Marcus's waist, just under his ribs, and the warmth of it goes through Marcus in a shockwave. Then Tomas's other hand is on Marcus's face, palm against his cheek, still so careful -- not as though he doesn't know how to touch another person, but as though he has no idea what to do with the physical reality of Marcus. Marcus nudges up into Tomas's palm, turning the hesitant touch into a caress. Words are so damn hard, sometimes, but take the words away and Marcus might manage to say something real.

Tomas leans up, pressing his forehead to Marcus's. "You said," he breathes, "you warned me not to make these attachments--"

"Yes, because it gives them leverage," Marcus says, with exasperated affection. "Doesn't matter whether we act on this, they'll still have the damn leverage. Keep up, Tomas."

Tomas's tension begins to uncoil. "Is this a mistake?" he whispers. 

Of course it damn well is. This is blood in the water for the next demon they'll have to face. Marcus is flaying them both open, and Tomas _trusts_ him. 

"Yeah," Marcus says, "it is," and kisses Tomas again, a long drowning kiss that twists a moan from him, threaded with urgency. Marcus wonders what sort of sounds he could wring from Tomas while sucking his cock. Probably best not to lead with that offer, no matter how eager Tomas seems, but Marcus pulls back, tugs on Tomas's hair until Tomas focuses on his face. "Tell me," Marcus says. "What you want more than anything. The reason you didn't say no."

He knows he's pushing, knows they could do something careful and gentle and fumbling that will make Tomas look at him soft-eyed in the morning, whether or not Tomas comes to his senses and that look is also flavored with regret. But Marcus is loath to do anything by half-measures, least of all this, and oh, Tomas is his type after all: Tomas stares at him for a moment in silence, and then says, with absolute confidence, "I want you on your back, begging for me."

It hits Marcus like a body blow. He knows he must look stunned, because a smile is tugging the sides of Tomas's mouth, fucking _smug_ , and Marcus surges forward to kiss him again, teeth in it to punish Tomas for being so sure of himself. The space between them is diminishing to nothing, each time they've kissed drawing them nearer. Marcus closes the last of it, sinking down to wrap around Tomas. Tomas's legs are open, giving Marcus space between them; his body is warm and solid, his cock hard against Marcus's thigh, but he doesn't move at all, except to kiss Marcus back. The hand on Marcus's waist slides down, and then up under his shirt.

God, it's good. Marcus hasn't even had this much in so long.

"What about you?" Tomas asks, fingers tracing aimless patterns on Marcus's skin. He kisses Marcus's eyelids, a small affection that makes Marcus feel dangerously unstrung. "What is the thing that you want?"

Everything. He wants to feel the weight of Tomas's cock on his tongue, and he wants to pin Tomas facedown on a mattress and kiss down the knobs of his spine, and yes, he wants to be on his back, spread out and begging Tomas to do every filthy thing he can think of. "I want," Marcus says, and can't bring himself to dissemble. "I want to memorize every inch of you."

Tomas looks up at him with dark, serious eyes. "That will take quite some time."

"Yeah," Marcus says. It comes out a whisper. This feels like too much. "And unless you packed rubbers and lube, I don't think your suggestion is going to have much traction tonight either."

Tomas laughs, the movement traveling through both of them. "Tomorrow, then."

Tomorrow, Mouse will be back, and this will all be more complicated. _Real._ Marcus has flung himself at this unthinkingly, the way he always does when it's himself that he should be cautious about. "We'll stop by a drugstore on our way to pick up Mouse," he says lightly.

"I would like that," says Tomas, who also throws himself into things without thinking, who would have denied himself forever and who opened up the moment Marcus made a move, who is still warm and aroused and inviting beneath him. Marcus can't even begin to unpack the tangle of affection and lust and concern he feels, and what Tomas is promising -- what Tomas is offering up so easily--

He kisses Tomas again, the only way he has to tell Tomas what this means. If the words of a prayer are the framework through which to work God's will, then kissing Tomas is the same, the act he has at hand to pour his feeling through. Both Tomas's arms encircle him now, one of his hands skating up Marcus's spine, the other clutching at his shoulder. Tomas returns the kiss so fervently that the edges of Marcus's lips are already beginning to sting from the friction of stubble, and beneath him Tomas is beginning to tremble, the controlled near-stillness of someone trying very hard not to rub up into desperately-needed friction. Marcus can almost _hear_ Tomas forbidding himself to move. It's this more than his own desire for relief that prompts him to grind down, and the noise Tomas makes into his mouth in response is almost a sob.

Marcus indulges the kiss a moment longer, rolling his hips languidly while Tomas makes soft choked-off noises and tugs at Marcus's shirt without specific intent. When he's satisfied that Tomas is probably half out of his mind, he rolls them both sideways, so they lie nose-to-nose on the narrow bed, limbs still entangled. Tomas's mouth is red from kissing, lips shining even in the dim motel lamplight, and Marcus adds _Tomas on his knees, sucking my cock_ to the everything that he wants. Tomas's eyes are on Marcus, intent, _longing_ , like he needs this as much as he needed to know what God had said to Marcus. Being looked at like that is terrifying.

"You ever touched anyone else's cock?" Marcus asks.

"No," Tomas breathes. "May I?" As though he needs to charm Marcus into saying yes. 

In answer, Marcus draws Tomas's free hand from under his shirt and down to his waistband. Thankfully sweatpants don't get uncomfortably restrictive, but it's still a relief to push them down his thighs. In the process, Tomas's knuckles brush the underside of his cock, and it sends a full-body jolt through Marcus. "Oh," Tomas says, as though he is only now realizing how fucking much Marcus wants this, and tentatively curls his hand around Marcus's cock.

Tomas's palm is impossibly hot, his grip cautious and loose, everything too dry for the friction to be comfortable. It's perfect. Marcus pants, his forehead pressed to Tomas's, momentarily overwhelmed by sensation. 

"Is that--?" Tomas asks. "I mean, this angle is--"

"Let me," Marcus says. He tugs Tomas's boxers down and spits on his palm, swiftly enough that Tomas has only just frozen in surprise when Marcus cants their hips closer, sliding their cocks together and tangling his fingers in Tomas's.

" _Fuck_ ," Tomas says, for the first time in Marcus's memory, his hand tightening to just the right side of painful. His hips stutter, and he seems far less interested in finding a rhythm than in keeping his fingers interlaced with Marcus's, on the growing-slick slide of their cocks against each other. "Marcus--"

If he says Marcus's name like that again, Marcus will break apart. Marcus presses his forehead closer to Tomas's, squeezing his eyes shut, and does his best to set some kind of pace. Tomas's cock feels fantastic, and the brush of their fingers is somehow more intimate than Marcus was expecting. It isn't the act, Marcus realizes. Anything they do is going to feel like this.

Tomas's movements are becoming more erratic. Close already, although Marcus doesn't blame him. He opens his eyes again, needing to see. Tomas's eyes are screwed shut, his mouth slightly open, the look on his face transported. Marcus wants to press two fingers into his mouth, or tell Tomas to come, or slow down until Tomas begs. Marcus wants to find Tomas's buttons and push them until Tomas is wild for it. Marcus wants to do this over and over until he knows exactly how to pry Tomas apart.

This time it's only a groping in the dark. But Marcus has a guess, so he waits until he can feel Tomas's thighs trembling, and then he says, quiet but firm, "Tomas, don't come," and stills their hands.

Tomas's eyes fly open. He stares at Marcus, shocked and caught out. " _Oh_ ," he says, and spills over their knuckles.

Marcus surges forward to kiss him again, on his surprised mouth and then all over his face, his brow and his eyelids and his nose and his jaw, while Tomas trembles through aftershocks and does his best to kiss Marcus back. Marcus waits until Tomas has gone boneless before starting to gently disentangle Tomas's unthinking grip from their entwined fingers and Tomas's softening cock. Tomas hisses and shivers and comes back to himself a little.

"Marcus, you--"

"Get your breath back," Marcus says. "I'm not in a rush."

Tomas nods wordlessly. They lie there, entangled, their breath falling in tandem. _Intimate_ , all of it. Marcus is warm with unhurried desire. He nudges Tomas's nose with his own and Tomas turns his head into the kiss, deep and slow and growing messy. 

When Tomas draws away, it's to push himself up on an elbow, rolling them so that Marcus is on his back. His face is flushed and his eyes are shining. His hand skims Marcus's belly, brushes across his hip, curls again around Marcus's cock, too lightly again for any relief. 

He meets Marcus's eyes. "You are on your back now," he says. "Beg."

Marcus stares at him. "You're serious."

"I know you were thinking of something more elaborate," Tomas says. He thumbs the head of Marcus's cock, runs his palm up the shaft with just enough firmness to be _perfect_ , and stops. "This is good enough for me right now. Beg."

Marcus feels lightheaded. Not enough blood anywhere near his brain. "Tomas--" he says. He feels balanced precisely on the edge of something. He wants to be what Tomas deserves. He shuts his eyes, and says from between his teeth, "Touch me. Please."

Tomas does, one long stroke in reward. Marcus takes a deep breath, and says into the darkness behind his eyes, "I thought of you every day you were gone." Tomas's hand falters. "Tomas. _Touch_ me." Tomas obliges, and Marcus says, "I missed you enough that it felt like a blasphemy. Almost never missed anyone else in my life like that. Tomas. Please." Tomas's hand has found a rhythm that is building heat inside Marcus, the kind of heat that's going to result in an orgasm that unfurls all the way up from his toes. He takes a shaky breath. "I can't imagine anything I don't want to do with you. I can't think of anything I wouldn't let you do. Yes, please, exactly like that, _please_."

"Marcus," Tomas breathes, in the tone of prayer.

When Marcus comes, there are tears in his eyes from the intensity of it, and it takes him a long time to come down.

+

They leave one twin bed's worth of blankets heaped on the floor for housekeeping -- Marcus pities whoever is on the morning shift -- and wedge together in the other bed. Tomas falls asleep almost at once, his head a heavy weight on Marcus's shoulder, his breathing even and soothing. Marcus lies awake in the dark, staring at the blank ceiling.

When God speaks to him this time it is, all things measured, gentle. Marcus has already been scoured by joy and revelation once tonight, and the second time is not so different. He does his best to bear up under it, fragile weak vessel that he is, and in the aftermath, the word echoing in his head is the only important one left.

_Stay._


End file.
